


Survival Techniques

by romanticalgirl



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-13
Updated: 2010-09-13
Packaged: 2017-10-23 10:43:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/249414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanticalgirl/pseuds/romanticalgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I get by with a little help from my [more than] friends</p>
            </blockquote>





	Survival Techniques

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Sundrenched Days and Starlit Nights - Pete/Mikey Happyfic Challenge](http://turps33.livejournal.com/1040026.html). Inspired by the quote _So you are saying that situations in life which seem to clash may not be 'wrong' at all; they may just be in the wrong octave?_

  
The doctor tries to explain things in musical terms, brain chemistry as symphony until Mikey tells him that he plays bass, not the violin and stop with the metaphors. Pete, on the other hand, makes Mikey’s mental breakdown all about him.

“You know, when I said we should do more stuff together, this isn’t what I meant.”

The only reason Mikey hasn’t kicked Pete out yet is that Pete’s brought him the first good coffee he’s had in weeks. Apparently you lose your mind for a little while and people forget all about the important stuff.

“Coffee.” Mikey offers in reply before taking another drink. Pete orders stupid frou-frou shit as much as anyone else but he always brings Mikey hot, black coffee, three sugars. When Pete really wants something, there’s a bitter shot of espresso in it and a bag of marble pound cake to round it all out.

“I brought cake. Going crazy requires cake.” Pete makes himself comfortable on Stacy’s couch, and Mikey doesn’t even bother to ask how Pete knew where he was or that he’d lost his mind. Pete has ways.

…sometimes Mikey hates his last name.

“Did Gee call you up? ‘Hey, we need a semi-competent bassist to fill in for Mikey while he’s hallucinating. Are you free’?”

“Wait. Wait.” Pete takes the lid off of his own coffee and inhales. The smell permeates the room and Mikey drinks it in with the strong bite of his own drink. “Your brother actually believes I’m semi-competent?”

“Oh. Good point. No.” Mike smiles to take the sting out of the words, not that Pete’s likely to take offense, and it feels strange. He’s not sure he remembers the last time he smiled. He’s really got to work on changing things when coffee and smiling are harder to remember than abject terror and desperate tears of relief. Of course, that would be why he’s now on a steady diet of pills and therapy. Mikey sits next to Pete, since ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ was probably coined with Pete in mind and snags his bag of pound cake.

“Whew. For a second there, I thought I was going to have to try _harder_ to make your brother hate me.”

“He doesn’t hate you,” Mikey mumbles around a bit of cake – and oh, god, that _almost_ makes up for bleeding walls and whispering voices. “He just doesn’t like competition.”

“Competition?” Pete tilts his head, a dead-on impression of Hemmy, and then grins, ridiculously wide. “Mikey. I told you, that stuff on the internet is made up. Gerard’s not really hot for you.”

“Goddamn it, Pete.” Mikey almost spills his coffee when he chokes at Pete’s comment. “I hate you.”

“You love me.”

“And I meant competition for the pretty, pretty princess diva crown. Not for _me_. Asshole.”

“Oh, well. I’m _no_ competition there. He’s got me confused with Beckett. I only take first in the needy and petulant child divisions.” He drinks around his smile, which just means to Mikey that he’s not concentrating enough on the drink. “Who is playing your parts?”

“Ray.”

“Awesome.”

“I have to learn a bass line that Ray Toro played.”

“I bet he totally dumbs it down for the rest of us mere mortals.”

“And hopefully even more than that for vaguely adept bassists.”

“You’re totally adept. You’re like…Johnny Adept.”

“That is your worst joke attempt ever. Even worse than the thing with the donkey and the vodka.”

“Ha. Said the crazy guy.”

“Said the _other_ crazy guy.”

“Mmm. Yeah. Point.” Pete takes a bite of his own cake – he always gets the lemon iced – and chews, staring down at the brown Starbucks bag. He looks up after a moment, as if he’s just realized the silence. Pete isn’t good at silence, though he doesn’t seem to mind so much with Mikey. “You’re okay?”

He’s not sure if Pete’s asking a question, giving him no choice or trying to reassure himself. “Well, I’ve been better.”

“I’ll get naked later. Take that into consideration before you finish this answer.”

Mikey smiles again, just the corners of his mouth twitching upward. “Even taking your potential nakedness into account, I’ve been better.” He blows across the surface of his coffee and watches the ripples spread. “But it was worse. A lot worse.”

“But now it’s better.”

“Yeah. Pills with fancy sounding names that, when you get the generic from the pharmacy, sound less fancy and more like something out of science fiction and, even generic, cost more than my rent payment a month. I take those in the morning and at night. Therapy three times a week and vials and vials of blood that Frank insists are used to slake vampire Gerard’s hunger.”

“Seriously, you guys need to realize the stories on the internet are _not_ true. Not even the ones I write.”

Mikey ducks his head, smiling again. He’d forgotten how easy it always is with Pete. “Tests and questions and pictures and ‘what does this _mean_ ’ and “how do you _feel_ ’ and “I’m sorry, Mr. Way, did you say a koala or a marmoset?”

“The answer, for the record, should always be marmoset.”

“Obviously.” He shrugs. “I know they need to find a balance, to find ‘normal’.” He makes air quotes and shrugs again. “But how do I know what that is? How do I know normal if I’ve always been crazy?”

“It’s like when they make people who need glasses pick out new frames at the optometrists.”

“I’m sure the optically challenged appreciate you comparing them to a hallucinating bipolar musician.”

“Hey, you’re awesome. I could have compared them to something really bad. Like…Republicans.”

“That’s a different kind of crazy. Can’t be cured.” He watches Pete pick up one of the many prescription bottles on the coffee table. “You know what it’s like. More of this. Less of that. Add this in. Take that out. No, don’t take it out, double your dose. Up and down worse than I ever was _without_ pills, using magic and alchemy disguised as science and chemistry.”

“Chemistry is a science, dude.”

“Hmm. Alchemy is too, I think. Kind of.”

“So, science and science dressed up as science.”

“Magic too. But hey, I’m not the family lyricist.” Mikey bites his lower lip then sticks his tongue out at Pete, smiling as Pete grins back. “Anyway. Drugs. Lots of drugs. And feelings.”

“But you feel better.”

“Most of the time. Except when I have to talk about feelings. And I’m still going to have swings. They won’t be as violent and the Depakote should keep me from seeing and hearing shit that isn’t there or tapping into the supernatural world of the fucking Blue Room.”

“Are you going to go back and finish the record?”

“Probably? Maybe?” He shudders hard then. He can’t help it. “No. Never…never fucking setting foot in there again if I can help it.”

“Awesome. So you can hang with me.”

“Aren’t you, like, in a band? Relatively famous? That kind of thing?”

“Rumors. Scurrilous lies.” Pete doesn’t quite blush, but his face darkens slightly. “And I’ve been instructed to lay low for a while.”

“What did you do now?”

“Nothing!” Pete looks hurt, but it’s far too practiced for Mikey to believe it for a second. Besides, when Pete’s really hurt, he looks anything but. “You wound me, Mikey. In my _soul_.”

“See? Right there I’m nicer than your band. They choke you or kick you in the junk. I just fuck your with immortal soul.”

“Well, it’s usually my head or my dick getting me into trouble, so I guess they’ve just learned to go right to the source.”

“And which was it this time?” Pete sighs and drinks some of his coffee. Mikey recognizes a stalling technique when he sees one. He’s got every Starbucks version mastered himself. He gives him some time, trying to gauge what Pete’s thinking. “Pete?”

“I didn’t actually _do_ anything.”

Mikey nods. “Dick?”

“The jury’s still out. The guys say dick, but management voted head.”

“Most times it’s pretty clear which is at fault. Brains are less sticky. Why the difference of opinion?”

“More accurately,” Pete keeps talking as if Mikey hadn’t said a word. “Management is voting for the ‘have you lost your fucking mind’ gambit. Which, you know. _Me_. So obviously the answer is yes. Roughly starting about age seven.”

“Pete? Right now I’m dealing with a seriously overactive imagination problem? Maybe you could narrow it down for me, before I skip my next dose and take out my manic aggression on you.”

“Fair enough.” Pete shrugs. “I lost my phone. Or, well, no. My phone was stolen.”

“Oh, shit. That sucks. But…so everyone just changes their phone number. Like me. Shit. I need to change my number.” Pete mumbles something, but Mikey’s too busy scratching out a note to himself to actually catch it. “What?”

Pete mumbles again and Mikey rolls his eyes, grabs Pete’s chin and just looks at him. Solid, steady eye contact. Pete hates that. Once Mikey feels him squirm, he tightens his fingers just the slightest bit.

“What was that?”

“There were pictures on it. Of…um…things. A thing. Something.”

“Pete.” Nothing in his voice reveals frustration, but he knows it gets through to Pete.

“Pictures of my dick.”

“Your dick.”

“Yeah.”

“On your phone.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Does that really matter?”

“Well, yeah. You were sending out pictures of your dick, which you know is one of my favorite things, and you didn’t send them to me.”

“You haven’t answered your phone in months, since you guys started this record. How do you know I didn’t send them.”

“I know.”

“Fine.” Pete leans back against the couch. “You know, my original plan today was to kidnap you and go on a road trip.”

“But?”

“Well, we sort of make our living on one big road trip, so it’s kind of lost some of its romance and mystique. And then there’s that whole medicine and psych evaluation thing. I figured if I took you away from that, your brother would find me and get Frank’s Uncle Guido to fit me with some cement shoes.”

“Not the fashion footwear you’re accustomed to.”

“No. But I bet I’d rock the look” He pauses then looks at Mikey, pouting. “You could at least _pretend_ you’d save me from Uncle Guido.”

“You now he’s not really Frank’s uncle, right?”

“Right. He’s on the Sopranos. Do you think people really _have_ uncles named Guido? And if they do, are they all mafia?”

Mikey thinks for a minute then shrugs. “You know that my trying to save you from Uncle Guido would probably net the same result as me asking Santa Claus for a new, less fucked up brain for Christmas.”

“Don’t tell me you don’t believe in Santa, Mikeyway. Because I know better.”

“But I believe that Santa Claus is very practical.” Mikey reaches out and catches Pete’s arm, tugging him closer, pulling on him until Pete gives in and rests his head in Mikey’s lap. He combs his fingers through Pete’s hair, fanning out his long bangs. “Material goods and two front teeth. That’s what the old guy is good for.”

Pete’s breath hitches as he starts to relax, a small shudder running through him. “And candy.”

“Candy is awesome.” He can feel the tension slowly ebbing from Pete, never quite gone, even in his quietest moments. But as it fades, lessens, he can feel his own doing the same. “So, you were going to kidnap me.”

“Yeah.” Pete’s voice is softer. “On the run.”

“Wear disguises?”

“Mmm. Yeah. Incognito. Secret identities. Whole nine yards.”

“But then I went crazy and ruined it.”

“No. Not ruined.” Pete turns over and looks up at Mikey. His eyes dance in the light, brown and gold and black. “Changed. Had to improvise.”

“So there’s a new plan.”

“Yeah. A new ‘escape the public humiliation of having your dick on the internet’ plan, coupled with a new ‘ignore public speculation of your breakdown’ plan.”

“And the first step to this is plying me with coffee and pastries.”

“The first step to any plan is plying you with coffee and pastries.”

“Very cunning. Top notch.” He traces Pete’s lower lip. “So, what’s next.”

“You’ve kidnapped me. I’m going to have to stay here.”

“Here.”

“Yes.”

“In Stacy’s apartment.”

“Yes.”

“Forever?”

“Yes.” Pete looks up at him, so seriously. “Forever.”

“ _Forever_.”

“Yes.”

“Huh.” Mikey glances around the room, at the couch that doubles as his bed, and then finally back down at Pete. “I don’t know man. I think we’re going to need more coffee for that.”

“I’ll have Starbucks deliver a truckload of beans in the morning.”

Mikey nods. “Reasonable. Okay then.” He grabs the remote and pushes the on button. “Let’s see what’s on TV.”  



End file.
